Page 56 of The Summer List

I don’t want them to see this.

I don’t want anyone to see this.

I have to get out of here.

I don’t realize I’ve bolted until corn leaves are already whipping my face and arms. One of my sandals snags the base of a stalk. I almost end up sprawled on my face before catching my balance, but I don’t slow down.

My lungs burn, and above the pounding of my heart, I can hear someone calling my name, but still, I don’t stop. I don’t know which way the road is anymore. I don’t know where I’m going. I just know that if I slow down for even a second, reality is going to catch up with me, and I’m going to crumble under its weight.

I tear my way through another few rows of corn before I trip again, but this time, I don’t manage to steady myself. I land hard on my knees and palms, a shriek ripping its way out of me when I feel the sharp edge of a rock dig into my kneecap.

I roll to a seat and inspect the damage while I continue to gasp for air. My knee is caked with dirt and oozing blood where the rock jabbed me. My hands are streaked with dirt too, and my bare arms are criss-crossed with shallow scrapes from the corn.

“NAOMI!”

I look up as the sound of shaking leaves and pounding footsteps gets closer and closer, followed by more shouts of my name. I’m too stunned from the fall to do anything but stare as Andrea bursts through the last few rows of corn separating us and then gasps when she spots me on the ground.

“Naomi! Are you hurt?”

She’s kneeling beside me before I have a chance to answer, one of her hands coming to rest on my shin as she inspects my bleeding knee with wide eyes. Her purple-tinged hair is hanging wild around her face, sweat is coating her neck, and her arms are streaked with the same scrapes as mine.

“You’re here,” I mumble.

She huffs a laugh laced with relief as her eyes meet mine. “Of course I am. I…I wasn’t about to let you disappear into a corn field forever without telling you I have a crush on you too.”

Everything stops.

My heart, my breath, the breeze rattling the tops of the corn stalks, the shift of the sun in the sky—it all goes still.

“You…what?”

“You heard me,” she murmurs, one corner of her mouth quirking up into that smirk that’s been undoing me since the day I met her.

She only manages to keep it up for half a second before her eyebrows draw together and uncertainty slides over her face like a cloud drifting across a clear sky.

“Look, I know we haven’t known each other for very long, and I know I’m just some random girl squatting in her dad’s house, but…but if what Priya said is true…if you do have a crush on me, then I figured maybe you should know I have a crush on you too. So yeah. That’s…that.”

When a few seconds pass without me saying anything, the furrows between her eyebrows deepen. She pulls her hand off my shin to ball it into a fist at her side.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good time to say that,” she says. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said it at all. I… God, this is such a cliché, but I’ve never really had this kind of a conversation with a girl, and I just thought… Honestly, I don’t know what I thought. I just did it.”

She lets out a quiet laugh that’s so bitter it makes my chest ache. She starts to push up to her feet, but I shoot my hand out to grab her arm and pull her back down.

Her eyes widen again, and I’m sure I look just as shocked, but I don’t let go.

She has a crush on me.

She likes me.

This unstoppable force of a girl likes me, and the rest of my life might feel like it’s spinning out of my control, but this moment right here is one I can hold onto.

This moment right here doesn’t have to crumple under the weight of all my doubts.

This moment can crush those doubts to dust if I let it.

“You really…like me?”

Andrea nods and closes her hand over the spot where my fingers are still gripping her arm. “I like you, Naomi. I was trying not to admit it to myself, but…I think I’ve liked you since you tried to murder me with the Venus de Milo.”

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